Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s first major balance patch nerfs armour

Treyarch has issued Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s first major multiplayer balance patch, and armour has taken a big hit.

Armour in both Blackout and multiplayer has been nerfed. In multiplayer, armour was protecting from more damage than intended when hitting areas of the body that have damage multipliers, such as the head or upper chest. This mainly affected weapons with chest modifiers, such as sniper rifles or high caliber II weapons. This issue is now fixed.

It’s a similar situation In Blackout. There, armour now lets more damage pass through to areas of the body that have damage multipliers, such as the head or upper chest. Treyarch said headshots, for example, now do more damage against level three armour, which is welcome. I’ve had many situations where I’ve unloaded into an enemy’s head only to see them absorb the bullets like a sponge.

Blackout players will be particularly interested in the update’s change to audio. Treyarch has tweaked the game to make teammates’ footsteps quieter than enemy footsteps. The developer has also adjusted footsteps for all armour types to give better directionality and distance information. It’s also fixed an issue that occasionally caused footsteps to be silent, and sorted a problem that was causing footsteps to become muffled when they shouldn’t be. All this is welcome.

Treyarch has also looked at how the weapons are performing and made some important changes. It’s buffed SMGs and nerfed assault rifles to make both classes closer in terms of effectiveness.

Treyarch has looked at the specialists, too, with nerfs to Ajax’s Ballistic Shield (thank god) and Recon’s Sensor Dart. Crash, whose Teammate Used Pack score event was being used to effectively farm scorestreak, has also been nerfed.

Also of note: fan-favourite mode Gun Game has been added to the featured multiplayer playlist, in Blackout the max player count for Solos is now up to 100, and spawn logic and spawn placement across the board has been adjusted.

There’s loads more on r/Blackops4. All in all, a solid update with a lot of welcome changes.